In Which Murder is Disproven… and Re-proven

Mrs. Eulalia Fudge was of the breed of witch known as Formidable, a Force to Be Reckoned With, complete with capital letters...even in all capitals, if the wind was in the east. Today, the wind appeared to be an east wind of gael force. Snape, in full possession of all the insight and prudence twenty years of spying and over forty years of Slytherinning had instilled in him, discreetly kept out of her direct line of sight and ensured that his wand was loose in its holster. Hermione, in full possession of her common sense and respect for his instincts, followed his example. Kingsley, being the Wizard in Authority, could only wistfully consider bolting out of the room, but was condemned to the full Force of the witch's Stare.

"You," she said, the syllable infused with glacial frigidity, "have made the most incompetent of mistakes. I do not know who that is, but I can assure you with complete confidence that that is not my husband. I suggest, Auror Shacklebolt, that you rid yourself of whatever incompetent told you that it was."

Head Auror Shacklebolt bristled. "I assure you, madam, that our forensic witches and wizards are both highly talented and trained. Several of them have conducted a battery of tests and examinations. Every test has positively concluded that this is, indeed, your husband. I can understand that you may be unwilling to accept..."

"Unwilling, my eye!" Mrs. Fudge snapped. "I believe I may be expected to know my husband, Auror Shacklebolt. I have laid my eyes on him nearly every day for the last forty years. I have supervised every detail of his activities and habits. I am quite aware that in spite of my direct order, the house-elves have smuggled to him nearly a pound of Turkish Delight every day. I am also aware that in consequence, the majority of his teeth have rotted into nothing. I am aware that I made him an appointment several years ago to see a competent dental wizard in London, whom he avoided as potential hazard to his public image, choosing instead to visit a shoddy little quack in Lichtenberg, of all places! Instead of regrowing his teeth, as any proper British dental wizard would do, the... the man pulled them and sent him home with little more than an anchored Glamour. My husband has possessed no more than a handful of teeth for years, whatever he might have wanted British Wizards to think!"

Everyone's eyes shifted to the corpse upon the table and its perfect set of pearly slightly-yellows. They were the teeth of an English wizard who has been drinking tea for several decades. They were not the teeth of an English wizard who had been guzzling cloyingly sweet candies for as long. Nor were they the appallingly artificial perfection that would have been the result of American-influenced denti-wizardry. Shacklebolt was forced to admit...to himself, if no one else...that something was very wrong.

Very few Aurory wizards would sleep that night.

"Duplicates," Head Auror Shacklebolt confirmed to Magisters Snape and Granger the next morning when he called at Hermione's flat. "Magically produced duplicates, created from some fragment of the original. All of them."

"That's old magic, isn't it?" Hermione queried rhetorically. "Intensive, though not particularly complicated to perform. I remember discussing it with Molly Weasley once, when I asked her how she managed to feed that horde of Weasleys on Arthur's salary. That was when I was struggling on Ministry pay," she added hastily. "I needed the advice. She used it to duplicate joints of meat." She went a bit green as she applied that statement to the current situation, as did Magister Snape. Shacklebolt looked none too happy with the idea himself.

"Er, household uses aside," he said, "it does tend to be a witch's magic; I don't know why. It's not taught in Hogwarts, as you remember, and it's one of the spells that mothers pass on to their daughters. Sons, not so much; we have other ways of accomplishing the same end."

"But none so effective for this... particular purpose," Magister Snape mused. "The methods I am familiar with are more easily detected, particularly by the Aurory's forensic spells. You would not have identified the bodies so conclusively if those methods had been used. Granger, what do you know of the duplication spell? I can't imagine you simply learning the method at Molly Weasley's feet and then leaving it alone."

"This duplication spell is known to modern scholarship from Rowena Ravenclaw's grammaries," she answered readily, ignoring the unspoken 'Know-It-All' her comrade had appended to his statement. "She mentioned that it was said to derive from Greek scrolls attributed to the sorceress Medea and passed down through her progeny. She is supposed to have used it to recreate the bodies of her children, after which she used animancy to return their souls to the copies and erased the memories of their deaths. Those scrolls, however, have been lost, as well as any of the development process Medea might have recorded and her method of reanimation. In a rare appendix to the Compendium, Price admits that while he was able to successfully cast Ravenclaw's duplication spell using bits from a cadaver, he was unable to in any way ensoul or animate the resulting body; he could only create a corpse, not a fully endowed human or animal."

"So it is possible for a man to cast the spell," Shacklebolt interjected. Magister Snape merely looked annoyed that she had unearthed an appendix of which he had not even been aware.

"Certainly," Magistra Granger agreed. "Price recounts that, knowing this to be a witch's spell, he conducted his research trials both by his own hand and by his wife, Mary's. The result was in both cases the same, leading him to believe that it was a witch's spell merely by tradition rather than by any inherent mechanism triggered by the caster's sex. Neither were able to produce more than an inanimate corpse, though identical to the original in every respect. Even a Frankenstein-like application of lightning merely caused involuntary movement for the duration of the strike.

"I myself delved further back when I spent my year abroad, in all the libraries I could find. While I found the spell mentioned and detailed several times, there wasn't any further information to be had, nor were there any compatible animation spells...at least, none that were conclusively proven to be effective, or that I was willing to try myself."

"And the method?"

Magistra Granger looked thoughtful for a moment, then stood up. "I'll show you once," she declared. "If you wish to try yourselves, you're welcome to after that."

After a skilled demonstration that had Auror Shacklebolt questioning...only half-jokingly...if she was in fact the perpetrator, Hermione sank down into her chair, grateful for the extra cushions that discreetly placed themselves behind her. The all-seeing Umber again; he had more than half-adopted her as well, though he was disinclined to show himself before guests. He preferred that other humans believe that Magister Snape merely possessed an extraordinarily gifted house-elf. She felt a cool touch upon her forehead and wrist and pushed the inquisitive hands away. "I'm fine," she murmured irritably. "It didn't use to take quite so much out of me."

"You didn't use to get back-ache, either, after sleeping on the ground," he sniped back, "and you're out of practice. I am well aware that you can afford to buy your chicken breasts nowadays." Magister Snape settled back comfortably into his own set perfectly plumped cushions. "And I do, in fact, agree with you; you're quite well, but the spell is almost absurdly draining. To the point of virtual impractibility. The question becomes: why use it at all?"

"The obvious answer is to implicate Creevey," Kingsley remarked. "Unless he did it himself to make the statues...?"

Hermione shook her head, then grimaced at the resulting needle of pain that lanced through her spine. "Mrs. Fudge made it quite clear that she saw the statue nearing the last stages of completion, and in the company of Mr. Fudge. Dennis wouldn't have needed a body to cast the statue...all he needs is a mold, and that's easy enough, probably far easier, with a wax form...and the duplication spell..." Her authoritative tone died, and Magistra Granger's voice became quite small. "I guess I was hoping; I didn't want to admit... The spell only works on dead tissue."

It was a rare gesture, and one he would never admit to, even if taxed by Auror Shacklebolt; Magister Snape pulled her against him and laid a kiss atop her head, which in turn...as he expected, for she hated feeling as though he were treating her like a child...caused her to pull away and kiss him thoroughly, something she knew he disliked doing in front of any sort of audience. It was possible they became somewhat carried away, for the next sound to register was that of Auror Shacklebolt mucking about in the kitchen. Hermione sat up and frowned at Snape. "I know what you were doing."

"I should hope so," he replied, and his lips curled into a fox-in-the-henhouse grin. Hermione merely raised her eyebrows, and her erstwhile professor shrugged. "You knew Apolline delaCour and Lavender Brown; I've taken great pains to avoid them as far as is wizardly possible. I cannot blame you for being affected by their deaths...or, god forbid, what must be a prolonged and ghastly torture."

"I guess I do hope they're dead at this point," she admitted, sitting back onto the couch Indian-style. "Any alternative is unthinkable. And we still haven't figured out what or why."

A vehement curse flung itself through the kitchen door and assaulted their ears, at which Magister Snape smirked and Magistra Granger sighed. Crookshanks sauntered out with far more deliberation and dignity, carrying a scrap of robe in his teeth. He had long since laid claim to a certain cabinet over the sink, and only just tolerated his lady-servant opening the doors to put in fresh food; Kingsley had disturbed His Majesty and paid the penalty, which...as the Kneazle knew the wizard to be a friend...was fairly mild. Kingsley, for his part, chose the better part of valour and retreated from the field, muttering further deprecations as he returned to his feline-free desk at the Aurory.

I don't feel like we're getting anywhere." Spinner's End, whatever its sins, was still larger than Magistra Granger's flat, and she now lay along the rug, staring at the ceiling. It was an unprepossessing ceiling, decorated only with a number of cracks that Umber had not been allowed to fix. The Brownie considered her current posture...not to mention the prohibition against plastering the ceiling...highly undignified, particularly when he was standing over her, but tolerated it as the Magistra claimed it helped her think. He also knew it was not his place to criticise liberties Master Snape allowed. The master himself was properly ensconced in his customary chair like the gentleman he was.

"If I may inquire as to our current status, Magistra?" Umber asked.

She laid out the facts before him, the master elucidating on several points, and what they had discovered in the few days that had passed since the discovery of the duplicates. The Aurory had begun again with the natural suspects: the family and friends of the missing, in the hopes of discovering a common thread. The majority had alibis for the times of the disappearances. Mrs. Fudge, for example, had been hosting a session of Crevasse for several other 'Quidditch Widows' of a certain age (about whom Severus made a number of quite rude remarks). Most of Madame delaCour's associates were, naturally, in France. Fleur, when asked, said (interspersing her comments between a host of childish crises) that her mother had intended to visit Gabrielle, who was settled near Dublin with an eye to Seamus Finnegan. Gabrielle claimed she had never arrived, nor had she informed her of any such intention. ("And Veelas are normally very courteous in that regard," Umber interjected. "They do not wish to... intrude on certain activities. They are very territorial creatures.") And of Lavender, only Ron was unaccounted for, and that, Hermione stated bluntly, she absolutely refused to believe. Of the two, Dennis was far easier to believe than Ron. He could have hexed or pummelled someone if his hair had got the better of him...and it would have been painfully easy in the case of Cornelius Fudge...but following such an act, he would have gone to some sort of authority (even if it was only Harry in his Auror persona), smote himself upon the breast, and claimed his culpability in loud, ringing tones best suited to Quidditch referee or a mad, old missionary upon a street corner. Privately, Magister Snape agreed with her, but he did not care to commit himself verbally. Beyond that, there were very few leads. The bodies that weren't real bodies had been carefully planted in the statues' cavities by magic that itself had no residue, nor did they possess any other magical signature but the barest traces that registered the duplication spell, traces which matched those the Aurory found on Hermione's demonstration chicken. Dennis remained in custody on the off chance he was somehow involved and the more likely chance that someone would murder him believing he was.

Umber considered the information for a moment, then spoke. "If I may, Magister, Magistra, it seems to me that the crux of the matter at hand is the framing of Wizard Creevey."

Magister Snape regarded him thoughtfully. Umber rarely meddled in affairs that were beyond his inbred purview, which was one of the reasons he didn't refuse the Brownie's service. What a nuisance it would be to have the taller creature leaning over his shoulder during a brewing and offering suggestions? "Explain, Brownie."

"It is my observation, Magister," Umber stated, "that with magic, it is a very simple matter to rid one's self of inconvenient evidence, such as a body. If one has house-elves, one merely gives the order, and the corpse disappears. If one does not, it is a matter of Vanishing it, or transporting it to some distant sea or volcano, or even turning it into safely anonymous Potions ingredients." At this, Hermione was fascinated to notice that Magister Snape had the grace to blush, and she wondered just whom he himself had 'reduced' in the past in such a fashion. Certainly it must have been during the Dark years, since she'd kept a close eye on him since, and the sneaky bastard wasn't that sneaky, surely. At the least, she knew of no other mysteriously missing people. Umber continued, "A Priori Incantatem is virtually useless after a certain amount of time, particularly if one is intelligent enough to avoid using obviously deadly or harmful spells. Thus, if one is determined, it is no difficult thing for one wizard...if he has the skill to kidnap or murder another...to simply make that one vanish. And if this can be done, then what is the purpose of making a body reappear, particularly if it isn't the original body?"

"And so we should focus on discovering who bears a grudge against Creevey," Magister Snape mused. He stood and paced a single line between chair and fireplace. "That narrows the field of investigation, certainly, but it leaves a great deal of dark, murky territory to cover. Creevey is, by nature, a disgustingly cheerful, sociable wizard; he may not please everyone...indeed, he probably irritates a great many who must deal with him...but I would daresay he rarely makes a true enemy, particularly one of the sort who would go so far as to attempt to frame him for murder. And it introduces another question: are the murders the primary motive, or are they incidental to the purpose of framing Creevey?"

"Who is the 'principal murderee?'" Granger murmured from the floor. "Damn. I hate it when people try to be devious. I hate it even more when they succeed."

"You're the one who got us into this mess," Snape reminded her. "I myself would be thoroughly content to be tending my deadly nightshade or raising red-venom wasps in glorious solitude."

"Hardly solitude, with Umber about." She smiled graciously at the Brownie. "Which is all for the better. And you are perfectly welcome to tell me to take myself and my detective instincts elsewhere for the duration."

There was an alarm that sounded somewhere deep in his brain when Magistra Granger said things like that, and Magister Snape was aware enough to pay it heed. "Don't be daft, Granger," he replied comfortably. This proved to be somewhat inadequate for its purpose.

She eyed him, as one does a magical beastie of whose temper one is uncertain, and picked herself up off the floor. Magister Snape watched her; she had dressed rather beautifully this morning, in black robes with a garnet and black brocade under vaguely mediaeval lacing and her hair half-tamed down her back. It was fascinating how women always seemed to find time for personal primping, come hell, high water, or Dark Lord. Magistra Granger retrieved her witch's hat...one of wide brim that framed her face and hair...from Umber and vanished out the door with a few meaningless courtesies.

"Dinner for one this evening, Magister," Umber commented. Though the phrasing was bland enough for the most phlegmatic of butlers, the implicit disapproval was as blatant as if the Brownie had cast a Sonorous spell to cover a twenty mile radius. Somewhat baffled and thoroughly annoyed, Magister Snape retreated in high dudgeon to his laboratory basement, wherein he proceeded to blow up several dozen glass phials and deride the entire female species for their incomprehensibility.